Magnetic Numbers

It's been over nine years since we bought the piece of land that triggered our acceleration into retirement, when we bought the land in 2006, the magnetic numbers on the fridge said 23, so 23 months was the target.

On our 19th wedding anniversary in December 2006, during a meal at the Keg in Oshawa, I presented Karen with a ring box with two magnetic numbers in it. It was a one and a two and for a moment Karen was confused and then slowly realised that my projections had sliced five months off our target.

So by the following wedding anniversary, we would be retired.

We drank a lot of wine that night.

History shows that to be true, but what actually happened was the land purchase made our feet so itchy, that we retired in the September of 2007.  Three months ahead of our revised target.

Today, after an adventure with a backhoe, the land was cleared again, eight years of weed trees and blackberries bulldozed down in four hours, and we sat on that log in the middle there and drank some more, it was a magical day.

And we found a building!

The guy who helped us with the heavy lifting used to own the property, and lived on it, he used his backhoe to clear a path along "our" creek to where the shack was, it was an amazing thing to see, and there it sits, like a ghost in the forest, with so much history and so much knowledge of what goes on in the black of night. 

Eight years, done.

Today was another happy day, a small celebration of eight full years retired, which happened at around 2.00pm Pacific time as it was clocking off time back in Ontario, eight years ago.

A nice meal at Gramma's Pub and a box of wine for tonight, all smiles around here and the plan is working better than expected, although to be fair, eight years ago, we did not really know what to expect.

On Thursday the 20th September 2007, the big moving truck arrived and was packed with all our belongings, then on the Friday, we packed up the bare bones into the Acura and set off on our epic journey across Canada on the Trans-Canada Highway.

Here's a last day photo at the landing gear emporium, the day of the great escape, the three amigos.

Graeme Wright, Doug Varley and Dave Weldon.

Rain capture system, done.

That's it, we're expecting rain on Tuesday and the gutter system and the rain barrel is in place.

Now it's time to reconstruct the entire back garden, lots of plans ahead.

Will keep you posted.

The Beer Menu

What was on the beer menu yesterday, unfortunately the American Pale Ale was sold out, but we made do with what was left.

Saturday morning Egger

Saturday morning, no need to rush off to a fast food joint for a bacon and egger and a morning coffee or two. Something to snarf down before heading out into the September sunshine.

Simple things make life so good.